SE UPP FÖR LIVET

This record is essential to understand the swedish seventies' music and the movement called "proggen" or "musikrörelsen" (music movement). Se upp för livet is Arbete och fritids fifth studio record. It is a very long double record which lasts for 88 minuts and features Ove Karlsson och cello, bass, guitar and organ, Jan Zetterquist on many instruments, Thomas Mera Gartz on fiddle, guitar and song, Torbjörn Abelli on bass and song, Tord Bengtsson on bass and Ulf Lauthers as an author. It was released in 1977 and contains twenty songs.

If not very good it is a very interesting record to explose, especially if you speak swedish. It is impressive how many styles they manage to mix on this disc. It reaches from punk rock in short "Lev hårt ? dö ung" about being young and don't think about what is best for you to wild space improvisations in sixteen minuts long and superb "Födelsemusik". That piece is totally chaotic but still sophisticated and somewhere there is a melody. Sometimes it feels they are just joking with us like in "Dansa i ring" or "Knoga och knega". Sometimes they are very monotonic such in "Spel i soluppgången" and in another "Stora David Bagare" there are nice vocal harmonies. "Älskade barn" is very obscene about sex and in "Jag är inte som andra" can we hear a poem about feeling alien. We get different views about how "progg" (and prog) music sounds. "Jag vet inte så noga" for example isn't prog musically but it's a nice soft romantic song about every day thoughts. The highlight on this album is the only pure folk song "Brudmarsch från Vågå i Norge" which is a heavy melodic piece, sprung from a Norwegian wedding. You can say a lot about this record and as a conclusion the best definition is art music or avant-garde music. Every other definition would fail.

But why don't I think it deserves more than three stars. Well three stars is good but what I miss here is professionalism. Many songs are made carelessly. Perhaps that is what people like with Arbete och fritid but it bothers me. It also lacks strong tracks that go to history and live on their own perfection. A very different album with something for every taste to enjoy.